Andersen's Joe Carter is reflected in a "Magic Wall" which automatically reads a passerby's identity from a magnetic card, then downloads intranet pages which may be of interest to the viewer from preloaded profiles. Chronicle Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez less

Andersen's Joe Carter is reflected in a "Magic Wall" which automatically reads a passerby's identity from a magnetic card, then downloads intranet pages which may be of interest to the viewer from preloaded ... more

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Andersen's Andre Machicao used a headset for a mobile computer that incorporates voice recognition and a front-mounted monitor. Chronicle Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez

Andersen's Andre Machicao used a headset for a mobile computer that incorporates voice recognition and a front-mounted monitor. Chronicle Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez

You walk into a discount store to buy a new VCR and find a model you like.

You whip out your Pocket Bargain Finder. The handheld, wireless device swiftly scans the World Wide Web and finds the same VCR offered by an online electronics seller for 25 percent less than the discount store's price.

So you punch in an online order on the bargain finder and leave the store having saved $50.

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Researchers at the 4-year-old center say a device like the bargain finder could soon find its way into consumers' hands because the technology behind it already exists.

Such a device would be a money- saving tool for consumers, especially on big-ticket items. It would also force traditional retailers to change their business practices to prevent losing customers -- perhaps having their own Web links to make sure they don't get beat on prices.

That's why the world's biggest business consulting firm has a team of about 160 researchers in three locations around the world trying to invent the future.

"Our business bridges that gap between what technology can do and what business needs to have done," said Joe Carter, an Andersen partner who heads Andersen's technology research. "We answer the basic question of, 'What the hell is it good for?' "

Rather than creating products to sell, the researchers are trying to imagine how technology being invented by local firms like Hewlett- Packard, Intel Corp. and 3Com Corp. can affect Andersen's clients, major corporations that need to develop business plans to react to changes over the next few years.

The success of online bookseller Amazon.com and the resulting decline in revenues for "brick and mortar" bookstores is a vivid example of how rapid technological advances can catch traditional businesses off guard if they don't think ahead, Carter said.

"Technology has not connected to the business community," Carter said. "Likewise, businesses can't stay current with new business technology at the velocity it's going."

In addition to the main lab on Page Mill Road, Andersen has researchers in Chicago and Sophia- Antipolis, France. Researchers come from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, sociology and anthropology.

A half-dozen corporate executives visit the centers each week to see and touch real-life applications of new technology, get exposed to fresh ideas and have their existing business models challenged.

That experience is more useful than reading a white paper about "another gee-whiz new technology," Carter said.

The Pocket Bargain Finder, for example, is a cross between a PalmPilot, a bar code scanner, a wireless phone and an Internet search engine. Andersen's research team wrote new software that tied those devices into a prototype bargain hunter.

Some Andersen clients may bring a form of pocket finders to consumers in the next 12 to 18 months, he said.

Another idea is the Magic Wall, a flat panel video screen that scans a person's identity card, such as a security card, and automatically dispenses pertinent information tailored to that person.

A prototype 42-inch Magic Wall hanging inside Andersen's Palo Alto center greets visitors by their first name and displays a schedule of their upcoming meetings or up-to-the-minute traffic and weather reports from the Internet.

Andersen also is crafting a "virtual call center," which would allow companies to decentralize large customer service centers.

The idea weaves together Internet telephony, corporate Intranets, and desktop computers to allow customer service representatives to work at home. There, the employees could process phone orders as they would in a central office cubicle, but save the company real estate costs.

"We made an internal announcement (to Andersen consultants) about it a couple of weeks ago and overnight we had 40 big companies who wanted to take a look at it," Carter said.

The wall and several other Andersen inventions use a software agent called Munin, named after the Norse god of memory, a raven that every morning scoured the earth for the latest news to report to the chief god Odin.

The wall and a portable device use Munin to become an "awareness machine" that scours the Internet and other sources for news. A pharmaceutical salesperson, for example, could have the latest drug industry news delivered in time for important meetings.

"It could be combing the Web every day and every night for information" you need, said Chad Burkey, an Andersen senior research scientist who wrote Munin.

When an executive with AT&T visited the center recently, 20 minutes before he arrived, the Munin technology provided Andersen consultants with a joke he had told two days before in a speech and a news story about his latest promotion.

"If you think about the way we as humans go through our lives, we leave traces everywhere," Burkey said. "If I send an e-mail, there's a time stamp on it. Munin is intended to gather up these little scraps and try to understand a holistic picture about us in order to better deliver information that can help us out."

The researchers have also developed a wearable computer for mobile workers like warehouse and maintenance employees who cannot be chained to a desktop.

For example, an electrician fixing a rooftop air conditioner can use the hands-free device, which has a small eye-sized screen affixed to a headset, to access computerized schematic designs of the unit and to order replacement parts.

Carter said one of the center's early accomplishments was identifying the current trend toward Internet commerce. Four years ago its researchers looked at a Java precursor made for interactive television and told clients its real worth was for selling products on the Internet, Carter said.

The center has become crucial for Andersen because the consulting firm's reputation is built upon advising companies on how to adapt and plan for the future.

"The issue for Andersen, (KPMG) Peat Marwick and any of those guys is to not go into a project and get caught flat-footed," said technology analyst and consultant Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc. in Campbell.

"You'd better have a place where you're already understanding how to use (new technology), how to integrate it and how to customize it," Bajarin said.

While other consulting companies have research arms, none are as big as Andersen's, which "had the most foresight of the consulting companies in understanding this," he said.

Andersen Consulting, based in New York, reported 1998 revenues of $8.3 billion, a 25 percent jump from the previous year. The privately owned consulting firm is in the middle of a split from its partner, the accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP.

The research arm's main mission is to support Andersen's lucrative consulting business, and Carter said Andersen has no plans to try to make and sell inventions directly to consumers.

However, the research arm is defending its patents "more aggressively," Carter said. And it is evolving into a line of business for Andersen that could eventually generate $1 billion in revenues annually as the company designs and installs new technology for corporations, he added.

By that time, the researchers may be working with technologies that don't even exist today.

"We now live in a world where the capacity for invention exceeds our imagination," Carter said.